Updating previous paths of inquiry, as well as introducing new ones, the program begins with a bit of both–discussion of the murder of Saudi journalist and possible Saudi and U.S. intelligence officer Jamal Khashoggi. A development which resonates strongly with previous discussion of the so-called “Arab Spring” (read “Muslim Brotherhood Spring”), the corporatist economics of Ibn Khaldun and the Brotherhood, and Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islamic Free Market Institute (which figures prominently in the post-9/11 Operation Green Quest investigation into al-Qaeda and terrorist financing), Khashoggi’s death has occasioned howls of outrage, much beating of breasts and tearing of hair in normally Saudi-friendly confines both inside, and outside of the U.S.

Khashoggi’s many connections and personal and institutional relationships are important and pivotal in a number of ways. They include:

1.–Khashoggi’s long-standing advocacy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Note the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the Muslim Brotherhood as “democratic.” In FTR #’s 787, 1025 and 1026, we noted how fundamentally undemocratic the Brotherhood is: ” . . . . In his penultimate column, Mr. Khashoggi said democracy in the Middle East couldn’t happen without the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes,’ Mr. Khashoggi wrote Aug. 28. ‘There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that politicalIslam is a part of it.’. . . .”
2.–Allegedly actual membership in the Muslim Brotherhood: ” . . . . Several of his friends say that early on Mr. Khashoggi also joined the Muslim Brotherhood. . . .”
3.–A working professional relationship with Khaled Saffuri, the co-founder of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islamic Free Market Institute. This institution was, in effect, an American nexus for the Muslim Brotherhood and its laissez-faire/corporatist economics, as well as being a central element in the Operation Green Quest investigation. We covered Operation Green Quest at length in numerous programs, including FTR #’s 356, 357, 462, 464, 513, 1006 : ” . . . . Jamal Khashoggi, a prolific writer and commentator, was working quietly with intellectuals, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democracy for the Arab World Now. . . . Khashoggi had incorporated his democracy advocacy group, DAWN, in January in Delaware, said Khaled Saffuri, another friend. The group was still in the planning stages, and Khashoggi was working on it quietly, likely concerned it could cause trouble for associates, including activists in the Gulf, Saffuri said. . . .”
4.–Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, who might be described as a fascist wishbone, with one foot in the Islamic fascist Muslim Brotherhood and the other in the secular Pan-Turkist fascism of the National Action Party and the Grey Wolves. ” . . . . Mr. Khashoggi was close to the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ties with Saudi Arabia had become increasingly strained in recent years. Turkey backed Qatar in its diplomatic spat with Saudi Arabia last year, and like Qatar, Turkey also differs with Saudi Arabia over its view of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Khashoggi knew President Erdogan personally and was a friend to some of his closest advisers, say people who knew him. . . .”
5.–Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, who, as discussed in numerous shows, including FTR #’s 347 and 358, basically ran Osama bin Laden. Khashoggi was also close to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, at one time the second largest stockholder in Newscorp (behind the Murdochs) and someone “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui named as one of the prominent Saudis who financed al-Qaeda. Immediately after being named by Moussaoui, al-Waleed announced that he was donating all of his billions to charity. ” . . . . Through it all, he maintained close ties to some of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful princes. In the early 2000s, he served as an adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence, during the prince’s time as ambassador to the U.K. and the U.S. He was a friend of the billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. . . .”
5.–Osama bin Laden and support for the Afghan Mujahadeen, who morphed into al-Qaeda. ” . . . . He traveled to Afghanistan as a journalist, where he became the first Arab journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. ‘A lot of them went to fight. He went to report,’ said Peter Bergen, an American journalist and academic who knew Mr. Khashoggi. . . .”
7.–Khashoggi was the nephew of Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who was pivotally involved with the Iran-Contra scandal, the support effort for the Afghan Mujahadeen, Al-Qaeda and the so-called “Truther” movement. ” . . . . His uncle was Adnan Khashoggi, a famous arms dealer. . . .”
8.– His relationship with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki (who “ran” Osama bin Laden for a time), his role in the Afghan war covering bin Laden and the Mujahadeen and his work for the CIA-connected Washington Post suggest the distinct possibility that the late Jamal Khashoggi was a spook-journalist, working for both the Saudis and elements of CIA.

In FTR #1015, we noted the issuing of school textbooks glorifying Nazism while Narendra Modi headed the Indian state of Gujarat.

In FTR #998, among other programs, we noted John Conyers’ active opposition to the OUN/B successor organizations in power in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo movement, which displays symptomatic features of an “op.” Of particular interest is the apparent role of Far right blogger Mike “Misogyny Gets You Laid” Cernovich. An interesting person to signal the destruction of one of the few actively anti-fascist lawmakers by on ostensibly “progressive” political movement.

It is interesting and significant that Conyers also co-sponsored a House Resolution condemning Modi’s support for Nazi racism and ideology.

” . . . . The sponsor, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said the State Department ‘has discussed the role of Modi and his government in promoting attitudes of racial supremacy, racial hatred, and the legacy of Nazism through his government’s support of school textbooks in which Nazism is glorified.’ The resolution said Modi revised school textbooks, which mentioned the ‘charismatic personality of Hitler the Supremo’ and failed to acknowledge the horrors of the Holocaust. . . .”

Worth noting in this context is the fact that Pierre Omidyar actively assisted the rise of both the OUN/B fascists in Ukraine and Modi’s BJP/RSS fascists in India, as discussed in FTR #889.

The rest of the program consists of discussion of the intersection of eugenics, white supremacy and anti-immigration fervor, This will be examined at greater length in our next program.
Key points of analysis include:
1.–Similarity between the title of a DHS posting and the 14 words slogan minted by Nazi David Lane.
2.–The resignation of a DHS Trump appointee due to links to white supremacists.
3.–Other Trump appointees with links to the Federation of Immigration Reform.
4.–A possible mind control link to the murder of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts.
5.-Review of the Sirhan Sirhan link to the “girl in the polka dot dress.”

The primary “jumping off point” of this program and the foundation of the previous two broadcasts is the political and commercial career of Baba Ramdev. A major supporter of Narendra Modi, his BJP and the Hindutva fascist RSS, for which the BJP is a political front, Ramdev runs a highly successful business career centered on the teaching of yoga and the marketing of “ayurvedic” foods, cosmetics and medicines. In turn, his business interests are inextricably linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #’s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hindutva fascism of Narendra Modi, his BJP Party and supportive elements, tracing the evolution of Hindutva fascism through the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP running India, Ramdev’s Patanjali food business has also dovetailed directly with India’s military development and potential strategic interests. A thought-provoking and possibly valid comparison might be seen between Ramdev’s operations and the operations of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among other programs, we examined the Moon operation as an extension around the world and down the decades of the Patriotic and Ultranationalist Societies of Japan. A religious, commercial and fascist political entity, the Unification Church bears many striking ideological and operational similarities to the Ramdev organization.

Beginning with review of ideological and operational links between RSS Hindutva fascists and the followers of Hitler and Mussolini, we highlight key features of what may seem to many to be a classic case of political “strange bedfellows.” Key considerations in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fascist affinity include:

1.–Opposition to the British Empire (as constituted), admiration for the domestic agendas of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the military prowess shown by the European Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades prior to that momentous event, senior RSS members had direct links to both Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany. Part of the RSS’ fascination with these totalitarian regimes was their shared opposition to the British Empire — however, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as multitudes of other Hindu nationalists) admired the way Mussolini and Hitler reorganized their respective nations so quickly from the wreckage of war to build a powerful economy and military under the banner of patriotism and nationalism. . . .”
2.–The studied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affinity: ” . . . . Marzia Casolari, an Italian scholar who studied Indian politics, once wrote of RSS’ connections with European fascism: The existence of direct contacts between the representatives of the [Italian] Fascist regime, including Mussolini, and Hindu nationalists demonstrates that Hindu nationalism had much more than an abstract interest in the ideology and practice of fascism. The interest of Indian Hindu nationalists in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as dictated by an occasional curiosity, confined to a few individuals; rather, it should be considered as the culminating result of the attention that Hindu nationalists… focused on Italian dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be an example of conservative revolution. . . .”
3.–Belief in the common, mythological “Aryan” origins of India and Germany: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ideology and imagery came from the symbols and history of ancient India – indeed, the infamous Nazi swastika was based on a Hindu symbol of strength and good fortune.
Moreover, the legendary history (some would say, myth) of the invasion of prehistoric India by the mysterious ‘Aryan’ tribes would (centuries later) provide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super master race’ that was destined to dominate the world. . . .”
4.–The enthusiastic embrace of Hitler and Mussolini by V.D. Savarkar, the ideological founder of Hindutva fascism and the primary architect of Gandhi’s assassination: ” . . . . Perhaps there was no greater admirer of Hitler and Mussolini in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, another leading member of RSS. In a speech delivered in 1940 (after the Second World War had commenced), Savarkar said: ‘There is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls himself a Democrat. Nazism proved undeniably the savior of Germany under the set of circumstances Germany was placed in.’ . . .”
5.–The Hindu Mahasabha’s support for a Hitler/RSS conjunction: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hindu nationalists also derided Gandhi for opposing Nazism and fascism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Party) intimately connected Germany with Indian culture and people. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope,’ the spokesman blustered. ‘Only a few Socialists headed by… Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any significance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory. . . .’ ”
6.–Other RSS leaders saw useful similarities in the ethnic chauvinist philosophy of both Hitler and Hindutva fascism. ” . . . . Another senior RSS member, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ideology should be applied to India. ‘German race pride has now become the topic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by.’ Golwalkar enthusiastically advocated for an India dominated by Hindus. ‘There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
7.–The ethnic ideological paradigm of Hindutva fascism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hindu’ with ‘German,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exactly. . . .”
8.–Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS ethnic theory and policy as converging: ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hindus should rule India and others should either be expelled or merged into the Hindu majority. ‘The Aryans who settled in India at the dawn of history already formed a nation, now embodied in the Hindus,’ he wrote. ‘Hindus are bound together not only by the love they bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through their veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affection warm but also by the of the common homage we pay to our great civilization, our Hindu culture. . . .”

We review of a missing and very possibly important chapter in Ramdev’s personal history: missing years in his young adulthood, raising the question of where he was and what was he doing? We wonder, in that same context, who put up the venture capital to launch Ramdev’s yoga and ayurvedic products businesses: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm family in north-central India, probably in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and given the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . . As a teenager, he left home for a gurukul. The years that followed are curiously blank; Ramdev has said very little about them, sometimes claiming he doesn’t remember. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his current name after a revelation . . . .”

In addition to promoting Yoga’s well-documented fitness benefits, Ramdev presents Yoga as a vehicle for reconnecting Indians with their mythic past. In fact, the discipline is rooted in more recent and European-imported culture: “. . . . This narrative about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacrament for Hindu nationalists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is mostly myth, an idealized origin story of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zionists, have fostered about themselves. The oldest Hindu scriptures contain almost no mention of physical postures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short verses suggesting comfortable postures for sitting. Many of the postures practiced in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries. . . .”

In fact, a significant contribution to contemporary Yoga discipline was made by a Danish Nazi sympathizer named Niels Bukh. ” . . . . Dozens of modern ashtanga yoga postures are similar or identical to those found in a gymnastic routine introduced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th century and originally developed by a Danish fitness instructor named Niels Bukh, who later became notorious for his pro-Nazi sympathies. . . .”

More about Niels Bukh: ” . . . . His system of exercise became highly popular in Germany, and in 1933 Bukh publicly expressed his allegiance to the National Socialist cause and its aim of improving the health of the Aryan race through gymnastics. . . .”

Yoga’s popularity in Weimar Germany translated into an affinity for the discipline expressed by Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who also saw the physical regimen as an extension of the ancient “Aryan” past of India. That mythical Aryan past also became part of SS and Nazi atavistic occult ideology. ” . . . yoga was recommended to death camp guards in Nazi Germany. But that’s exactly what historian and yoga expert Mathias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In National Socialism’. . . .”

More about the SS/Yoga connection: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the party as being the pursuit of ‘Ayran’ people. Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, an S.S. captain and yoga expert, who influenced his chief Himmler and convinced him that ‘yoga can internally arm us and prepare us for the forthcoming battles.’ . . . . Himmler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race theories and mysticism relating to his S.S. ‘supermen,’ carried around a German copy of the Bhagavad Gita with him wherever he went. He regarded the ancient Sanskrit epic as being a blueprint for cruelty and terror, using it, said Tietke, to ultimately justify the Holocaust. He wrote; ‘He identified himself and the SS with the old Indian Kshatriya caste and its publicized attitude of unscrupulous killing for one’s ‘higher purpose.’ . . . . ”

This dovetails with the SS mythology/ideology, which saw the SS as the embodiment and fulfillment of the “Aryan” race.

Next, we review of the sweetheart land deals given to the Moritomo Gakuen school in Japan by the Abe government and comparisons between that arrangement and the bargain-basement land purchases afforded the Ramdev operation by the Modi government.

We then “dolly out,” so to speak, and begin to examine the Modi/RSS/Ramdev axis in a broader political and geopolitical context.

We review the strong links between “Team Trump” and the Modi/BJP/RSS axis. There are also strong links between Tulsi Gabbard, the left-cover Hindutva fascist who nominated Bernie Sanders for President in 2016 and The Modi/BJP/RSS axis., as well as connections between “Team Trump” and Gabbard.

We also review Pierre Omidyar’s significant role in both India and Ukraine:

Omidyar’s work in both Ukraine and India–operating as an apparent asset of U.S. intelligence and (perhaps) the Underground Reich–are best viewed in the context of the Earth Island and a flanking maneuver on Russia and China.

Stretching from the Straits of Gibraltar, all across Europe, most of the Middle East, Eurasia, Russia, China and India, that stretch of land: comprises most of the world’s land mass; contains most of the world’s population and most of the world’s natural resources (including oil and natural gas.) Geopoliticians have long seen controlling that land mass as the key to world domination.

With the OUN/B successor organization fascists in power via the Maidan coup and a parliamentary coalition government with Petro Poroshenko, pressure is being put directly on Russia’s flank. With the Hindutva fascists of Narendra Modi/BJP/RSS in power in India, pressure is being put on China’s flank: “U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy in a little noticed statement on May 30. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific Oceans,” as well as Washington’s determination to remain the dominant power in both. Such a name change may not sound like much, but someday you may look back and realize that it couldn’t have been more consequential or ominous. Think of it as a signal that the U.S. military is already setting the stage for eventual confrontation with China. . . .On June 8th, for example, the DoD launched Malabar 2018, a joint Pacific Ocean naval exercise involving forces from India, Japan, and the United States. Incorporating once neutral India into America’s anti-Chinese “Pacific” alliance system in this and other ways has, in fact, become a major twenty-first-century goal of the Pentagon, posing a significant new threat to China. . . .”

Of significance for us in the context of anti-China/Earth Island geopoliticals are the anti-communist utility of the BJP/RSS/Ramdev nexus and the dovetailing of a Ramdev/Patanjali installation in Assam with the needs of the Indian Air Force for a base in that area:

1.–Ramdev and the B.J.P. appear to have utility as vehicles to eradicate Communist influence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more visible since Modi’s 2014 victory. The group and its affiliates have built hundreds of schools and job-training centers in Assam and other northeastern states in recent years. I visited several and saw unmistakable signs of the RSS ideological program. . . . All this hard indoctrination work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won control of Assam’s state government in legislative elections. And in March of this year, the party won stunning electoral upsets in two adjacent northeastern states, where leftist parties had dominated for decades. There was talk of a ‘saffron wave’ that might spread to the south Indian regions, including Communist-dominated Kerala, that have long resisted the advance of Hindu nationalism. Many Indian political analysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essential to the recent electoral victories. But one RSS volunteer in Assam, a construction contractor, told me Ramdev’s presence and his yoga promotion had been very influential, too. . . .”
2.–Also of significance is the dovetailing of Modi/B.J.P. assisted Patanjali operations with the Indian military–specifically, the Indian Air Force: “. . . . After admiring the cookie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deliciously smooth, median-free stretch of pavement that resembled a runway. In fact, it is a runway, built in consultation with the Indian Air Force so that jet fighters can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will dedicate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a knowing look, ‘We are near China.’ Patanjali seems almost to view itself as an extension of the state — or rather, an illustration of what has become a ‘state-temple-corporate complex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indian author Meera Nanda. . . .”

We conclude the program with review of a Hindutva chant used by Baba Ramdev and Narendra Modi.

In our previous programs, we have spoken of Ramdev’s use of a Modi/BJP/RSS invocation, highlighting Ramdev’s working of the “fascis”–the “bundle” of accolytes–in Fuhrer/Duce-like fashion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the microphone and introduced the phalanx of several hundred Hindu religious students, known as brahmacharis, sitting in neat rows on the field. Everyone repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shouted. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chanted the words — ‘India my motherland is great’ — that have become a defining slogan of the Hindu nationalist movement. . . .”

Narendra Modi echoed this in his September 2015 speech at the SAP Center in San Jose. (As mentioned above, Tulsi Gabbard helped arrange Modi’s tour.) An audio excerpt concludes this program. For convenience, we have included a portion of text from Modi’s speech.

The primary focal point of these two programs and supplemental discussion in the program to follow is the political and commercial career of Baba Ramdev. A major supporter of Narendra Modi, his BJP and the Hindutva fascist RSS, for which the BJP is a political front, Ramdev runs a highly successful business career centered on the teaching of yoga and the marketing of “ayurvedic” foods, cosmetics and medicines. In turn, his business interests are inextricably linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #’s 795, 988 and 989, 990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hindutva fascism of Narendra Modi, his BJP Party and supportive elements, tracing the evolution of Hindutva fascism through the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP running India, Ramdev’s Patanjali food business has also dovetailed directly with India’s military development and potential strategic interests. A thought-provoking and possibly valid comparison might be seen between Ramdev’s operations and the operations of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among other programs, we examined the Moon operation as an extension around the world and down the decades of the Patriotic and Ultranationalist Societies of Japan. A religious, commercial and fascist political entity, the Unification Church bears many striking ideological and operational similarities to the Ramdev organization.

This will be discussed at greater length in FTR #1020.

Key points of discussion and analysis of Ramdev and his political and commercial undertakings include:

1.–Ramdev’s ideological resonance with the Hindutva fascist invocation of an idealized mystical past: ” . . . . [BJP head and murder suspect] Amit Shah told the crowd that the B.J.P. wanted Ramdev to join them in reforming the Indian educational system. One of the party’s new priorities is an ambitious effort to rewrite Indian school textbooks to assert Hindu primacy. Mahesh Sharma, India’s culture minister and an avowed follower of the RSS, has said he hopes to rewrite the conventional narrative about India as a multicultural tapestry, and to inculcate the belief that the ancient Hindu scriptures are historical facts, not legends. ‘There is a lot of work to be done in education,’ Shah said on the stadium floor, just after the premiere of Ramdev’s biopic. ‘Because of our saints and our heroes — all this needs to be brought into our educational system.’ . . . Ramdev walked to the lectern, smiling graciously at the gaggle of B.J.P. luminaries onstage. He pledged his support to Modi and Shah, and their efforts to transform India. . . . ‘I dedicate my time and energy to the cultural and spiritual education of the country, to bring our country the great knowledge of the Vedas.’ . . . ‘We will see an Indian education policy in this country . . . Before stepping down, he pumped his fist once again in a chant of ‘India my motherland is great.’ The crowd roared. . . .”
2.–Ramdev’s frequent invoking of the “fascis”–the “bundle” of accolytes and his working of the crowd in Fuhrer/Duce-like fashion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the microphone and introduced the phalanx of several hundred Hindu religious students, known as brahmacharis, sitting in neat rows on the field. Everyone repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shouted. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chanted the words — ‘India my motherland is great’ — that have become a defining slogan of the Hindu nationalist movement. . . .”
3.–The fusing of Ramdev’s political endeavors on behalf of Modi and the RSS with his commercial activities: ” . . . . Ramdev has been a prominent voice on the Hindu right, and his tacit endorsement during the landmark 2014 campaign helped bring Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power. He appeared alongside Modi on several occasions, singing the leader’s praises and urging Indians to turn out for him. Ramdev has called Modi ‘a close friend,’ and the prime minister publicly lauds Patanjali’s array of ayurvedic products — medicines, cosmetics and foodstuffs. . . . ”
4.–The favored treatment afforded Ramdev and his Patanjali business by the Modi regime: ” . . . . One thing is certain: Ramdev has received extraordinary favors from the Indian government since Modi was elected. Soon after the 2014 election, B.J.P.-led state governments across India began facilitating steep discounts on land purchases for Patanjali. . . . In the largest of these deals, Patanjali was given a 1,200-acre parcel of land in the eastern state of Assam at no cost. According to state legislature documents I was shown by a local academic, the deal was made by an agency controlled by the Bodoland People’s Front, a party aligned with the B.J.P. Last year a Reuters investigation documented several discounted land sales and leases in three other Indian states that saved the company a total of $46 million. . . .”
5.–Ramdev, the B.J.P. as vehicles to eradicate Communist influence in parts of India: The RSS has become more visible since Modi’s 2014 victory. The group and its affiliates have built hundreds of schools and job-training centers in Assam and other northeastern states in recent years. I visited several and saw unmistakable signs of the RSS ideological program. . . . All this hard indoctrination work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won control of Assam’s state government in legislative elections. And in March of this year, the party won stunning electoral upsets in two adjacent northeastern states, where leftist parties had dominated for decades. There was talk of a ‘saffron wave’ that might spread to the south Indian regions, including Communist-dominated Kerala, that have long resisted the advance of Hindu nationalism. Many Indian political analysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essential to the recent electoral victories. But one RSS volunteer in Assam, a construction contractor, told me Ramdev’s presence and his yoga promotion had been very influential, too. . . .”
6.–The dovetailing of Modi/B.J.P. assisted Patanjali operations with the Indian military–specifically, the Indian Air Force: “. . . . After admiring the cookie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deliciously smooth, median-free stretch of pavement that resembled a runway. In fact, it is a runway, built in consultation with the Indian Air Force so that jet fighters can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will dedicate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a knowing look, ‘We are near China.’ Patanjali seems almost to view itself as an extension of the state — or rather, an illustration of what has become a ‘state-temple-corporate complex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indian author Meera Nanda. . . .”
7.–Evident similarities between Ramdev’s “swadeshi”–“economic nationalism”–with Mussolini’s concept of the Corporate State and Hitler’s National Socialism: ” . . . . Ramdev has led vastly popular campaigns against corruption, donning the mantle of swadeshi, or Indian economic nationalism, to cast foreign companies as neocolonial villains. In a sense, Ramdev has changed Hinduism itself. . . .”
8.–Evident similarities between the “economic xenophobia” propelling Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade wars and the swadeshi/economic nationalism of Ramdev and company: ” . . . . When it comes to marketing against foreign competitors, they wield their holiness like a club. One Patanjali ad runs: ‘As East India Company plundered our country for 200 years likewise these multinationals are exploiting our country by selling their harmful and dangerous chemical products. Beware!’ . . . .”
9.–Ramdev’s seamless melding with the anti-Muslim ideology of the RSS, manifesting the strategic and tactical demonization of the “malevolent other” that characterizes so many iterations of fascism: ” . . . . Ramdev has changed Hinduism itself. His blend of patriotic fervor, health and religious piety flows seamlessly into the harder versions of Hindu nationalism, which are often openly hostile to India’s 172 million Muslims. Although Ramdev prefers to speak of Indian solidarity, his B.J.P. allies routinely invoke an Islamic threat and rally crowds with vows to build temples on the sites of medieval mosques. . . . .”
10.–Ramdev’s atavistic preoccupation with the mythically idealized past anti-Muslim fervor at times borders on incitement to violence: ” . . . . And the nation, in Ramdev’s telling, is subtly twinned with a history and culture that is distinctly Hindu: yoga, ayurvedic medicine and the ancient Vedic scriptures from which they are said to have emerged. Sometimes the hints are not so subtle. Two years ago, when a Muslim politician refused to chant a nationalist slogan, Ramdev laid into him at a right-wing rally, saying that were it not for his respect for the law, “we would behead hundreds of thousands” of such people. A court later issued a warrant for Ramdev’s arrest, though the matter appears to have been dropped. . . .”
11.–Similarities between Ramdev and Trump: ” . . . . In his own way, Ramdev is India’s answer to Donald Trump, and there is much speculation that he may run for prime minister himself. Like Trump, he heads a multibillion-dollar empire. And like Trump, he is a bombastic TV personality whose relationship with truth is elastic; he cannot resist a branding opportunity — his name and face are everywhere in India. . . .”
12.–Ramdev’s manipulation of the actual history of Yoga to fit into his “Ancient Vedic” theological politics: ” . . . . This narrative about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacrament for Hindu nationalists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is mostly myth, an idealized origin story of the kind so many would-be nation-builders. . . . The oldest Hindu scriptures contain almost no mention of physical postures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short verses suggesting comfortable postures for sitting. Many of the postures practiced in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Dozens of modern ashtanga yoga postures are similar or identical to those found in a gymnastic routine introduced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th century and originally developed by a Danish fitness instructor named Niels Bukh, who later became notorious for his pro-Nazi sympathies. [The association between Nazism and yoga will be highlighted later on in the discussion–D.E.] . . .”
13.–A missing and very possibly important chapter in Ramdev’s personal history: missing years in his young adulthood, raising the question of where he was and what was he doing? We wonder, in that same context, who put up the venture capital to launch Ramdev’s yoga and ayurvedic products businesses: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm family in north-central India, probably in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and given the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . . As a teenager, he left home for a gurukul. The years that followed are curiously blank; Ramdev has said very little about them, sometimes claiming he doesn’t remember. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his current name after a revelation . . . .”
14.–Ramdev has been accused of some dark acts, including foul play: ” . . . . One former high-level executive at Patanjali, who worked at the company for several years, spoke to me on condition of anonymity, saying he feared retaliation. When I asked him why he left, he said of Ramdev: ‘Because he’s a crook. Because he’s a hypocrite.’ He rattled off a sheaf of shocking claims about fraud and employee abuse. . . . . One story involved Ramdev’s brother, Ram Bharat, who was arrested in 2013 and accused of kidnapping and imprisoning a worker suspected of theft (the charges were later dropped). Another former Patanjali executive told me similar stories and added that he began receiving threatening phone calls after he refused to facilitate what he saw as kickback schemes. He complained to Balkrishna, he said, but the calls continued and — feeling his life might be in danger — he resigned. . . .”
15.–Ramdev’s gravitas has spawned fear in critics: ” . . . . One Assamese university professor, who asked not to be named because he feared for his safety, told me that Ramdev had abetted the RSS’s efforts to ‘question all other religions here, anything non-Hindu.’ He also said Patanjali — emboldened by its ties to the Modi government — had run roughshod over laws regulating the harvest of medicinal plants. . . .”
16.–Ramdev has been suspected of foul play: ” . . . . In 2007, Ramdev’s own guru, a man named Shankar Dev, disappeared without a trace after falling into poverty and illness, and questions were raised about Ramdev’s neglect of him. (Because Dev initiated Ramdev into monkhood, Ramdev would have been expected to treat him like a parent.) In 2010, Rajeev Dixit, one of Ramdev’s closest advisers, who taught him about swadeshi economics and helped make Patanjali a national brand, died suddenly. Some of his friends believe that Ramdev resented Dixit’s own rising celebrity, and they publicly speculated about foul play. . . .”
17.–Similarities between the RSS/Ramdev political agenda and ideology and Hitler’s hailing of National Socialism as creating a “new man.” ” . . . . Patanjali ran more than 380 workshops for prospective employees, where it taught a ‘value system.’ Assam’s people, he explained, had ‘bad habits,’ including eating nonvegetarian food and a lack of proper respect for the nation. ‘They’ve been listening to corrupt politics from corrupt people for too long,’ he said. ‘We take what our sages said thousands of years ago and put it to use. We didn’t invent it. We took what’s available in our scriptures and put it in a modern format.’ In other words, they inculcate Hindutva. . . .”

In numerous programs, we have highlighted the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk, which deals, in part, with the rehabilitation of the Third Reich’s reputation and the transformation of Hitler into a hero.

In FTR #’s 988 and 989, 990, 991, and 992, we detailed the Hindutva fascism of Narendra Modi, his BJP Party and supportive elements, tracing the evolution of Hindutva fascism through the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi to the present time.

Modi’s BJP is a political cat’s paw for the RSS, the Hindutva fascist organization that murdered Gandhi.

It appears that a Serpent’s Walk scenario is indeed unfolding in India.

As the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. There are exceptions: When a children’s book is entitled “Great Leaders” and has a picture of Adolf Hitler standing next to Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, that’s a book cover that suggests this book should be skipped.

Key points of analysis and discussion include:

1.–Narendra Modi’s presence on the same book cover (along with Gandhi, Mandela, Obama and Hitler.)
2.–Modi himself has his own political history with children’s books that promote Hitler as a great leader: ” . . . . In 2004, reports surfaced of high-school textbooks in the state of Gujarat, which was then led by Mr. Modi, that spoke glowingly of Nazism and fascism. According to ‘The Times of India,’ in a section called ‘Ideology of Nazism,’ the textbook said Hitler had ‘lent dignity and prestige to the German government,’ ‘made untiring efforts to make Germany self-reliant’ and ‘instilled the spirit of adventure in the common people.’ . . . .”
3.–In India, many have a favorable view of Hitler: ” . . . . as far back as 2002, the Times of India reported a survey that found that 17 percent of students in elite Indian colleges ‘favored Adolf Hitler as the kind of leader India ought to have.’ . . . . Consider Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography. Reviled it might be in the much of the world, but Indians buy thousands of copies of it every month. As a recent paper in the journal EPW tells us (PDF), there are over a dozen Indian publishers who have editions of the book on the market. Jaico, for example, printed its 55th edition in 2010, claiming to have sold 100,000 copies in the previous seven years. (Contrast this to the 3,000 copies my own 2009 book, Roadrunner, has sold). In a country where 10,000 copies sold makes a book a bestseller, these are significant numbers. . . .”
4.–A classroom of school children filled with fans of Hitler had a very different sentiment about Gandhi. ” . . . . ‘He’s a coward!’ That’s the obvious flip side of this love of Hitler in India. It’s an implicit rejection of Gandhi. . . .”
5.–Apparently, Mein Kampf has achieved gravitas among business students in India: ” . . . . What’s more, there’s a steady trickle of reports that say it has become a must-read for business-school students; a management guide much like Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese or Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking. If this undistinguished artist could take an entire country with him, I imagine the reasoning goes, surely his book has some lessons for future captains of industry? . . . .”
6.–Hitler’s shockingly popular reputation in India, is due, in part, to the efforts of Bal Thackeray, the now deceased chief of the Shiv Sena party which is a long-standing BJP ally. ” . . . .Thackeray freely, openly, and often admitted his admiration for Hitler, his book, the Nazis, and their methods. In 1993, for example, he gave an interview to Time magazine. ‘There is nothing wrong,’ he said then, ‘if [Indian] Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany.’ This interview came only months after the December 1992 and January 1993 riots in Mumbai, which left about a thousand Indians slaughtered, the majority of them Muslim. Thackeray was active right through those weeks, writing editorial after editorial in his party mouthpiece, ‘Saamna’ (‘Confrontation’) about how to ‘treat’ Muslims. . . .”
7.–Again, Thackeray felt that the treatment Hitler meted out to the Jews should be meted out to Muslims: ” . . . . Thackeray said this about the führer’s famous autobiography: ‘If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.’ . . . .”

Next, we further develop the operational link between Pierre Omidyar (of EBay and Intercept fame) and Narendra Modi’s BJP (a political front for the Hindutva fascist RSS. (We covered this in–among other programs–FTR #889.)

Jayant Sinha, the lead advisor for the Omidyar Network in India became Narendra Modi’s finance minister and is now a member of parliament. Sinha garlanded (adorned with flowers) eight men convicted of killing a meat trader last year as part of a far right Hindu national “cow vigilantism” campaign. The killing was caught on video. One of the killers was a local BJP leader.

The killing of Alimuddin Ansari took place a day after Modi belatedly proclaimed that “killing people in the name of cow protection unacceptable.”

Prior to Modi’s statement, cow vigilantism had been going on for years with a muted response from Modi’s government.

As a result of Modi’s statement, the eleven people involved with the killing were sent to a fast track court and given life sentences in March, making it the FIRST successful conviction over an act of cow vigilantism.

Sinha protested that conviction, claiming that he was convinced that justice was not done. He then demanded that the case be probed again, but by the Central Bureau of Investigation this time.

Fast forward to today: eight of the convicted were released on bail, while they appeal their conviction. They then traveled to Sinha’s residence where they were feted.

The symbolic importance of cow vigilantism isn’t simply a demonstration of the BJP’s willingness to cater to Hindutva fascist ideology. The focus on the cow is part of the atavistic, anti-modernist, anti-pluralist narrative the BJP and its ideological RSS parent have been promoting.

Cow vigilantism is central to a narrative that exalts a mythical time of Brahmanic purity that allegedly existed before the arrival of the British and Muslims on the Indian subcontinent.

Because lower caste Hindus and Muslims who consume beef in India, the cow vigilantism provides a convenient proxy issue to excuse attacks on those seen as ‘other’ by the Hindu nationalists.

As the article puts it, a crucial ingredient to Modi’s political success has been tapping into a nostalgic impulse for a purer past. The sacredness of the cow has come to symbolize that Hindu nationalist drive for national renewal.

” . . . . Under this worldview, the golden age of Hindu rule in the Vedic period, subsequently sullied by foreign pollutants—the British, yes, but the rapacious Muslim in particular—is to be channeled into twenty-first-century renewal, piloted by an arbitrary set of “Hindu values.” And foremost among these is the inviolability of the cow. . . .

. . . . The BJP, as well as its ideological parent organization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, peddle a version of nationalism that prioritizes exclusivity, in which Indians are rigidly defined by ethnicity and religion. The trope of the cow is thus a convenient instrument, measuring the allegiance to the nation along gastronomical—and thereby spiritual—lines. Non-Hindus are deemed a surplus population, and violence against them is sanctioned in an attempt to cleanse the true body politic. . . .”

In our discussions with Peter Levenda, we have set forth the manner in which fascism mobilizes xenophobic, eugenicist longing for a mythical “purer past” to gain and rally adherents.

” . . . . But the crucial ingredient is the way Modi has tapped into the nostalgic impulse. Svetlana Boym, a Russian-American philologist, has described this as the ‘historical emotion’ of modernity, and argued that attempts to create a ‘phantom homeland’ through ahistorical restoration would only breed monstrous consequences. As she writes in The Future of Nostalgia, it is a ‘restorative nostalgia’ that ‘is at the core of recent national and religious revivals. It knows two main plots—the return to origins and the conspiracy.’

And so we inhabit a landscape where MAGA caps, Little England, the Hindu Rashtra, and the Islamic Caliphate have arrested the imagination of millions. These are all overtures to an Edenic past, promising an order that preserves tradition by purifying society of contagion. . . .”

In our discussions with Peter Levenda, we have set forth the manner in which fascism mobilizes xenophobic, eugenicist longing for a mythical “purer past” to gain and rally adherents.

With 2017 now in the rear view mirror, we conclude the program by capping our revulsion at the Bay Area’s 50th anniversary celebrations of the Summer of Love (1967.) In FTR #991, we detailed the Hindutva fascist/Nazi philosophy of Hare Krishna cult founder and head guru A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

On 1/29/1967, Prabhupada and his cult were the beneficiaries of monies generated by a concert and dance featuring the leading San Francisco psychedelic-era rock bands. The event also featured participation by LSD guru Timothy Leary, whose activities and career are inextricably linked with the CIA.

Program Highlights:

1.–Hare Krishna cult founder Bhaktivedanta Swami’s fundamental opposition to democracy. “So monarchy or dictatorship is welcome. . . . Personally, I like this position, dictatorship. Personally, I like this.”
2.–Bhaktivedanta Swami’s teachings dovetail superbly with Nazi occult philosophy. ” . . . . Bhaktivedanta Swami, however, speaks extensively about ‘the Aryans’–at least twenty-five of his purports and over a hundred lectures and conversations contain lengthy elaborations on the topic. He places all those whom he calls ‘non-Aryan’ in a category similar to his ‘unwanted population,’ thus dividing humans into two groups: a large group of varna sankara and non-Aryans on one side, and a small group of Aryans, ie those who follow varnashram, on the other: ‘Those who traditionally follow these principles are called Aryans, or progressive human beings.’ ‘The Vedic way of life,’ he writes, ‘is the progressive march of civilization of the Aryans.’ ‘In the history of the human race, the Aryan family is considered to be the most elevated community in the world.’ . . . . In more than one fifth of his statements he clearly describes or defines them in racial terms: The Aryan family is distributed all over the world and is known as Indo-Aryan. The Aryans are white. But here, this side, due to climatic influence, they are a little tan. Indians are tan but they are not black. But Aryans are all white. And the non-Aryans, they are called black. Yes . . .”
3.–Bhaktivedanta Swami’s philosophy saw Europeans and Americans as part of, and extensions of, the Aryan race. Note that he, also, invokes the mythical lost past, in which Aryan/Brahmanic culture became degraded. In an address to a French audience, he intoned as follows: ” . . . . So we all belong to the Aryan family. Historical reference is there, Indo-European family. So Aryan stock was on the central Asia. Some of them migrated to India. Some of them migrated to Europe. And from Europe you have come. So we belong to the Aryan family, but we have lost our knowledge. So we have become non-Aryan, practically. You French people, you are also Aryan family, but the culture is lost now. So this Krishna consciousness movement is actually reviving the original Aryan culture. Bharata. We are all inhabitants of Bharatavarsha, but as we lost our culture, it became divided. So on the whole, the conclusion is that the Aryans spread in Europe also, and the Americans, they also spread from Europe. So the intelligent class of human being, they belong to the Aryans. Aryan family. Just like Hitler claimed that he belonged to the Aryan family. Of course, they belonged to the Aryan families. . . .”
4.–It should come as no surprise that Bhaktivedanta was pro-Hitler, viewing the Fuehrer as “a gentleman,” who had to kill the Jews because they were “financing” against him. “. . . . So these English people, they were very expert in making propaganda. They killed Hitler by propaganda. I don’t think Hitler was so bad [a] man. Hitler knew it [the atomic bomb] . . . . He was gentleman. He said that ‘I can smash the whole world, but I do not use that weapon.’ The Germans already discovered. But out of humanity they did not use it. . . . The activities of such men are certainly very great . . . Therefore Hitler killed these Jews. They were financing against Germany. Otherwise he had no enmity with the Jews. . . . Therefore Hitler decided, ‘Kill all the Jews.’ . . . .”
5.–An in-depth view of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s view of “shudras” reveals the deep racist/fascistic views of social class/caste. Described variously as “black” or “common,” shudras are the focus of deep ideological contempt. This should be seen against the background of the Aryan racial philosophy of Bhaktivedanta Swami. “. . . . ordinary people; the laborer class; once-born; the lowest class of men; non-Aryan; worker; the black man; he must find out a master; one who has no education; almost animal; just like a dog; he becomes disturbed; one who is dependent on others; they are ignorant rascals; unclean; equal to the animal; no training; fools, rascals. . . According to his understanding, people of black or dark skin color, as well as native Americans, are shudras, are third-class, degraded, and less intelligent: ‘Shudras have no brain. In America also, the whole America once belonged to the Red Indians. Why they could not improve? The land was there. Why these foreigners, the Europeans, came and improved? So Shudras cannot do this. They cannot make any correction. . . . A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sitting there? A third class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and America. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro. . . .”
6.–Bhaktivedanta Swami did not feel that the black American slaves should be freed. ” . . . . Just like in America. The blacks were slaves. They were under control. And since you have given them equal rights they are disturbing, most disturbing, always creating a fearful situation, uncultured and drunkards. What training they have got? . . . That is best, to keep them under control as slaves but give them sufficient food, sufficient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be satisfied. . . . ‘So the Kiratas, they were always slaves of the Aryans. The Aryan people used to keep slaves, but they were treating slaves very nicely.’ And that the Kiratas were Africans, he had explained many times: ‘Kirata means the black, the Africans.’ . . . .”
7.–Bhaktivedanta Swami had some “choice” things to say about women: ” . . . . Generally all women desire material enjoyment.Women in general should not be trusted. Women are generally not very intelligent. It appears that women is a stumbling block [sic] for self-realization. . . . Although rape is not legally allowed, it is a fact that a woman likes a man who is very expert at rape. When a husbandless woman is attacked by an aggressive man, she takes his action to be mercy. Generally when a woman is attacked by a man—whether her husband or some other man—she enjoys the attack, being too lusty. . . .”

This program concludes our FTR series on Hindutva fascism (Hindu nationalist fascism). In previous programs, we highlighted key features of the governance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose BJP is a political front for the RSS. Formed along the lines of Mussolini’s Blackshirts in 1925, the RSS was the organization that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. (We have discussed Modi, the RSS and the BJP in numerous broadcasts, including FTR #’s 795, 889, 441, 442, 445, 988 and 989, 990, 991.)

In past discussions of the RSS and BJP, we have noted the following:

1.–Modi’s political fortunes were boosted with support and apparent financing from Pierre Omidyar, who also helped finance the rise of the OUN/B fascist successor organizatios in Ukraine.
2.–Modi and his BJP are viewed with great favor by Breitbart kingpin, former Trump campaign manager and adviser Steve Bannon. A number of Trump’s business associates in India are associated with the BJP.
3.–Bernie Sanders’ prospective Vice-Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard helped arrange the details for Modi’s American visit and is networked with the RSS.
4.–The above-mentioned Tulsi Gabbard is a member of the Hare Krishna cult, as is her husband, her in-laws, her parents and her Congressional staff.
5.–Gabbard is highly regarded by Modi admirer Steve Bannon as well.
6.–Gabbard was seriously considered for a cabinet position by Team Trump.
7.–Under Modi, anti-Muslim violence has dramatically accelerated, journalistic and civil free speech has been attenuated, opponents of the government have faced various forms of retaliation and oppression, journalists and activists critical of Modi/BJP/RSS have been murdered, a virulently anti-Muslim cleric has been appointed head of Uttar Pradesh (India’s largest province), voting machines have apparently been tampered with, and Indians have expressed positive feelings about martial law. BJP members have celebrated Gandhi’s murder.

In this program, we position the ideological/political tile of Hindutva fascism in the mosaic of what freelance Danish journalist Henrik Kruger (author of The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence and International Fascism) and Kevin Coogan (author of Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International) call “The Fascist International.”

Beginning with review of ideological and operational links between RSS Hindutva fascists and the followers of Hitler and Mussolini, we highlight key features of what may seem to many to be a classic case of political “strange bedfellows.” Key considerations in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fascist affinity include:

1.–Opposition to the British Empire (as constituted), admiration for the domestic agendas of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the military prowess shown by the European Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades prior to that momentous event, senior RSS members had direct links to both Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany. Part of the RSS’ fascination with these totalitarian regimes was their shared opposition to the British Empire — however, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as multitudes of other Hindu nationalists) admired the way Mussolini and Hitler reorganized their respective nations so quickly from the wreckage of war to build a powerful economy and military under the banner of patriotism and nationalism. . . .”
2.–The studied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affinity: ” . . . . Marzia Casolari, an Italian scholar who studied Indian politics, once wrote of RSS’ connections with European fascism: The existence of direct contacts between the representatives of the [Italian] Fascist regime, including Mussolini, and Hindu nationalists demonstrates that Hindu nationalism had much more than an abstract interest in the ideology and practice of fascism. The interest of Indian Hindu nationalists in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as dictated by an occasional curiosity, confined to a few individuals; rather, it should be considered as the culminating result of the attention that Hindu nationalists… focused on Italian dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be an example of conservative revolution. . . .”
3.–Belief in the common, mythological “Aryan” origins of India and Germany: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ideology and imagery came from the symbols and history of ancient India – indeed, the infamous Nazi swastika was based on a Hindu symbol of strength and good fortune. Moreover, the legendary history (some would say, myth) of the invasion of prehistoric India by the mysterious ‘Aryan’ tribes would (centuries later) provide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super master race’ that was destined to dominate the world. . . .”
4.–The enthusiastic embrace of Hitler and Mussolini by V.D. Savarkar, the ideological founder of Hindutva fascism and the primary architect of Gandhi’s assassination: ” . . . . Perhaps there was no greater admirer of Hitler and Mussolini in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, another leading member of RSS.In a speech delivered in 1940 (after the Second World War had commenced), Savarkar said: There is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls himself a Democrat. Nazism proved undeniably the savior of Germany under the set of circumstances Germany was placed in. . . .”
5.–The Hindu Mahasabha’s support for a Hitler/RSS conjunction: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hindu nationalists also derided Gandhi for opposing Nazism and fascism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Party) intimately connected Germany with Indian culture and people. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope,’ the spokesman blustered. ‘Only a few Socialists headed by… Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any significance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory. . . .’ ”
6.–Other RSS leaders saw useful similarities in the ethnic chauvinist philosophy of both Hitler and Hindutva fascism. ” . . . . Another senior RSS member, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ideology should be applied to India. ‘German race pride has now become the topic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan [India] to learn and profit by.’ Golwalkar enthusiastically advocated for an India dominated by Hindus. ‘There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
7.–The ethnic ideological paradigm of Hindutva fascism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hindu’ with ‘German,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exactly. . . .”
8.–Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS ethnic theory and policy as converging: ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hindus should rule India and others should either be expelled or merged into the Hindu majority. ‘The Aryans who settled in India at the dawn of history already formed a nation, now embodied in the Hindus,’ he wrote. ‘Hindus are bound together not only by the love they bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through their veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affection warm but also by the of the common homage we pay to our great civilization, our Hindu culture. . . .”

The late Savitri Devi was an embodiment of the Hindu/Nazi/Aryan ideological convergence. Devi has been among the elements synthesizing Hindutva fascism with the contemporary “Alt-Right.” Devi has been the focal point of renewed interest:

1.–” . . . . I filed her as a curiosity at the back of my mind, until the rising tide of extreme-right politics in Europe and America threw up the name ‘Savitri Devi’ once again. It isn’t hard these days to find discussions of Savitri Devi’s books on neo-Nazi web forums, especially The Lightning and the Sun, which expounds the theory that Hitler was an avatar – an incarnation – of the Hindu god Vishnu, and Gold in the Furnace, which urges true believers to trust that National Socialism will rise again. The American extreme-right website Counter-Currents hosts an extensive online archive of her life and work. . . .”
2.–More about the resuscitation of Devi: ” . . . . Her views are reaching a wider public, too, thanks to American alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, former Trump chief strategist and chair of Breitbart News, who have taken up the account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil — a theory she shared with other 20th Century mystical fascists. Dark metal bands and American right-wing radio stations also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, which Savitri Devi believed that Hitler was once destined to bring to an end. . . . ”
3.–The psychological and political foundation of the Aryan/Hindutva convergence is neatly summed up in the BBC Magazine article we excerpt: ” . . . . Savitri Devi herself is almost forgotten in India now, but the Hindu nationalism she espoused and helped to promote is in the ascendant, much to the concern of her nephew, the veteran left-wing journalist Sumanta Banerjee. ‘In her book A Warning to the Hindus, which came out in 1939, she advised the Hindus to cultivate a ‘spirit of organised resistance throughout Hindudom,’ he says. ‘The targets of this resistance were the Muslims, who were a threat, according to her, to the Hindus. And this is the same fear that is being echoed today.’ . . .”
4.–More about the dynamics behind the “Alt-Right”/Hindutva convergence: ” . . . . Hindutva is the official ideology of Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which claims that Muslims and secularists have undermined the strength of the Hindu nation. Though the party’s official spokesmen condemn violence, the riots that led to the tearing down of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the current waves of attacks – sometimes fatal – by vigilante groups on Muslims and dissenters tell a different story. . . . ”
5.–Highlighting the nature of the ideological similarity between Nazi ethnic policy and Hindutva fascist ideology: “In the US, racism, anti-communism and Christian fundamentalist notions about the impending apocalypse have together prepared the ground for the far right’s flirtation with occult Nazism and Hindu prophecies. And as in India, the traditional ruling majority’s fear of losing power has been an effective recruiting tool. . . .”

In addition to the position of Hindutva fascism in the Fascist International , we examine Pierre Omidyar, his espousal of neoliberal economic doctrine, his support for Modi’s Hindutva fascists and his support (along with U.S. intelligence cut-outs like the National Endowment for Democracy and the Agency for International Development) for the Ukrainian OUN/B successor organizations like Pravy Sektor, Svoboda and the Azov Battalion.

In FTR #889, among other programs, we highlighted Omidayar’s devotion to the Austrian school of economic theory.

The political/economic context of Omidyar’s efforts can be seen as a “neo-liberal” flanking maneuver: putting “free-market” forces in power and the Western and Southeastern flanks of Russia and China. Those two nations constitute much of what geo-politicians call “The Earth Island” or “World Island.”

Omidyar’s neo-liberal, Austrian economic school can be seen in Modi’s enthusiastic reception by Silicon Valley movers and shakers, at the same time that the Indian leader is moving to weaken his country’s child labor laws.

Program Highlights Include:

1.–The Omidyar-owned Honololu Civil Beat’s curious cover-up of Tulsi Gabbard’s participation in the Hindutva fascist Hare Krishna cult.
2.–The participation of Indian soldiers in the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS during World War II.
3.–Tulsi Gabbard’s co-sponsorship of a bill that would label opponents of Ukraine’s entrance into the EU as “terrorists.”
4.–Omidyar journalistic protege Glenn Greenwald had Andrew “Weev” Auerenheimer at his party celebrating Greenwald and Laura Poitras’s receipt of the prestigious Polk Award. Weev’s name has been bandied about in connection with the [alleged] hacking of DNC e-mails. We note that Weev is apparently resident in Ukraine. ” . . . . [GOP operative Peter] Smith also reached out to “Guccifer 2.0”—an alias the U.S. intelligence community has linked to Russian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nationalist hacker who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Alt-Right media figure Charles] Johnson said he also suggested that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auerenheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias ‘Weev’ and has collaborated with Johnson in the past. . . .”

1.–Hare Krishna founder and chief guru Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada provided commentary on Hindu religious text “. . . . and often suggested that they had not actually been written by himself, but that God, Krishna, had revealed them to him. . . .” This was in order to “ . . . .underline the absolute position, superhuman qualities, and overall importance of the guru. [Basically, “guru” as “fuhrer”–D.E.] . . . .”
2.–Bhaktivedanta Swami was fundamentally opposed to democracy. “So monarchy or dictatorship is welcome. . . . Personally, I like this position, dictatorship. Personally, I like this.”
3.–Bhaktivedanta Swami felt that Hinduism was in a “fallen state” and that only his discipline/teachings could restore it to its proper place. In our discussions with Peter Levenda, we have noted that fascism manifests a longing for a bygone time–one that never really existed.
4.–Fascist philosophies frequently invoke a by-gone, mythical “golden age,” which the fascist cadre in question will restore, after the corrupting forces have been neutralized. ” . . . . He too believed that in bygone ages a divine and scientific social system had existed in India, and like Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, he too founded a movement whose express mission was to reestablish what he often referred to as the “perfectional form of human civilization,” varnashram dharma. . . .” Note that “foreigners” or what would be termed in our society today “immigrants,” “migrants,” “Mexicans,” or “Muslims” are blamed for this degeneration. ” . . . . . . . . Indian civilization on the basis of the four varnas and ashrams deteriorated because of her dependency on foreigners, or those who did not follow the civilization of varnasham. . . .”
5.–Bhaktivedanta Swami valued the traditional position of the Kshatriya warrior caste, to which the Nazi SS considered themselves as successors, according to Kevin Coogan’s brilliant analysis (in Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International.) “. . . . the kshatriyas should be taught how to fight also. There will be military training. There will be training how to kill. Kshatriya students in the ISKCON varnashram college were to practice killing: ‘Just like Kshatriyas, they have to learn how to kill.’ . . . . There is no single instance where Bhaktivedanta Swami speaks about kshatriya training without mentioning killing. . . . ‘Learn to kill. No nonviolence. Learn to kill. Here also, as soon you’ll find, the Kshatriya, a thief, a rogue, unwanted element in the society, kill him. That’s all. Finish. Kill him. Bas. Finished. . . .” It is not that because the Kshatriyas were killing by bows and arrows formerly you have to continue that. That is another foolishness. If you have got . . . If you can kill easily by guns, take that gun. All the royal princes were trained up how to kill. . . . A Kshatriya, he is expert in the military science, how to kill. So the killing art is there. You cannot make it null and void by advocating nonviolence. No, That is required. Violence is also a part of the society. . . .”
6.–Hare Krishna cult member Tulsi Gabbard’s political vector may be evaluated against the background of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s prognostication that the Hare Krishna cult could infiltrate and take over a key political party and/or government in a democracy. Recall that he viewed democracy with utmost contempt. ” . . . . Bhaktivedanta also thought that he and his movement could take over some government and rule some part of the world: ‘However in Kali-yuga, democratic government can be captured by Krishna conscious people. If this can be done, the general populace can be made very happy.’ . . . .”
7.–Bhaktivedanta Swami’s teachings dovetail superbly with Nazi occult philosophy. ” . . . . Bhaktivedanta Swami, however, speaks extensively about ‘the Aryans’–at least twenty-five of his purports and over a hundred lectures and conversations contain lengthy elaborations on the topic. He places all those whom he calls ‘non-Aryan’ in a category similar to his ‘unwanted population,’ thus dividing humans into two groups: a large group of varna sankara and non-Aryans on one side, and a small group of Aryans, ie those who follow varnashram, on the other: ‘Those who traditionally follow these principles are called Aryans, or progressive human beings.’ ‘The Vedic way of life,’ he writes, ‘is the progressive march of civilization of the Aryans.’ ‘In the history of the human race, the Aryan family is considered to be the most elevated community in the world.’ . . . . In more than one fifth of his statements he clearly describes or defines them in racial terms: The Aryan family is distributed all over the world and is known as Indo-Aryan. The Aryans are white. But here, this side, due to climatic influence, they are a little tan. Indians are tan but they are not black. But Aryans are all white. And the non-Aryans, they are called black. Yes . . .”
8.–Bhaktivedanta Swami’s philosophy saw Europeans and Americans as part of, and extensions of, the Aryan race: ” . . . . So we all belong to the Aryan family. Historical reference is there, Indo-European family. So Aryan stock was on the central Asia. Some of them migrated to India. Some of them migrated to Europe. And from Europe you have come. So we belong to the Aryan family, but we have lost our knowledge. So we have become non-Aryan, practically. You French people, you are also Aryan family, but the culture is lost now. So this Krishna consciousness movement is actually reviving the original Aryan culture. Bharata. We are all inhabitants of Bharatavarsha, but as we lost our culture, it became divided. So on the whole, the conclusion is that the Aryans spread in Europe also, and the Americans, they also spread from Europe. So the intelligent class of human being, they belong to the Aryans. Aryan family. Just like Hitler claimed that he belonged to the Aryan family. Of course, they belonged to the Aryan families. . . .”
9.–It should come as no surprise that Bhaktivedanta was pro-Hitler, viewing the Fuehrer as “a gentleman,” who had to kill the Jews because they were “financing” against him. “. . . . So these English people, they were very expert in making propaganda. They killed Hitler by propaganda. I don’t think Hitler was so bad [a] man. Hitler knew it [the atomic bomb] . . . . He was gentleman. He said that ‘I can smash the whole world, but I do not use that weapon.’ The Germans already discovered. But out of humanity they did not use it. . . . The activities of such men are certainly very great . . . Therefore Hitler killed these Jews. They were financing against Germany. Otherwise he had no enmity with the Jews. . . . Therefore Hitler decided, ‘Kill all the Jews.’ . . . .”
10.–An in-depth view of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s view of “shudras” reveals the deep racist/fascistic views of social class/caste. Described variously as “black” or “common,” shudras are the focus of deep ideological contempt. This should be seen against the background of the Aryan racial philosophy of Bhaktivedanta Swami. “. . . . ordinary people; the laborer class; once-born; the lowest class of men; non-Aryan; worker; the black man; he must find out a master; one who has no education; almost animal; just like a dog; he becomes disturbed; one who is dependent on others; they are ignorant rascals; unclean; equal to the animal; no training; fools, rascals. . . According to his understanding, people of black or dark skin color, as well as native Americans, are shudras, are third-class, degraded, and less intelligent: ‘Shudras have no brain. In America also, the whole America once belonged to the Red Indians. Why they could not improve? The land was there. Why these foreigners, the Europeans, came and improved? So Shudras cannot do this. They cannot make any correction. . . . A first-class Rolls Royce car, and who is sitting there? A third class negro. This is going on. You’ll find these things in Europe and America. This is going on. A first-class car and a third-class negro. . . .”
11.–Bhaktivedanta Swami did not feel that the black American slaves should be freed. ” . . . . Just like in America. The blacks were slaves. They were under control. And since you have given them equal rights they are disturbing, most disturbing, always creating a fearful situation, uncultured and drunkards. What training they have got? . . . That is best, to keep them under control as slaves but give them sufficient food, sufficient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be satisfied. . . . ‘So the Kiratas, they were always slaves of the Aryans. The Aryan people used to keep slaves, but they were treating slaves very nicely.’ And that the Kiratas were Africans, he had explained many times: ‘Kirata means the black, the Africans.’ . . . .”
12.–Bhaktivedanta Swami had some “choice” things to say about women: ” . . . . Generally all women desire material enjoyment.Women in general should not be trusted. Women are generally not very intelligent. It appears that women is a stumbling block [sic] for self-realization. . . . Although rape is not legally allowed, it is a fact that a woman likes a man who is very expert at rape. When a husbandless woman is attacked by an aggressive man, she takes his action to be mercy. Generally when a woman is attacked by a man—whether her husband or some other man—she enjoys the attack, being too lusty. . . .”

We conclude with review Tulsi Gabbard’s networking with Modi, the BJP and the RSS:

1.–Gabbard is also a big fan of Narendra Modi, having been involved with the planning of Modi’s U.S. visit and networking with BJP members: ” . . . . Gabbard, a strong supporter of Modi, is a Democrat Congresswoman from Hawaii. . . . She had spoken to Modi after his victory in the Indian general elections and congratulated him and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She has also been involved in the planning of Modi’s US visit and had last month met two BJP leaders Vijay Jolly and MP Rajyavardhan Rathore in that connection. . . .”
2.–On a trip to India, Gabbard networked with both the BJP and the RSS, the Hindu nationalist/fascist party for which Modi’s BJP is a cat’s paw. (All of Modi’s cabinet appointments were drawn from the RSS. Modeled on the German Nazi Party and Mussolini’s blackshirts, the RSS killed Gandhi.): “. . . . Speaking at a fundraising event for the BJP in August 2014 . . . Gabbard said that Modi’s election victory was only possible because ‘people stood up, one by one by one by one, and said we will demand that this change occurs.’ . . . Gabbard was treated as royalty on her visit to India last year. As she hobnobbed with the Indian prime minister and foreign minister among others, “The Telegraph,” a Kolkata-based newspaper, called her ‘the Sangh’s mascot’ in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hindutva organisation and the ideological guardian of the BJP party that rules India now. . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1.–Review of the links between “esoteric Nazism,” the Hindu/Aryan myth.
2.–Review of Savitri Devi, a key exponent of the Hindu Aryan myth.
3.–Review of RSS founder V.D. Savarkar’s embrace of the “Aryan/Hindu” myth as it applied to the British colonial masters of India.